


You Stand Alone to Every Record I Own

by thatdamneddame



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Failboats In Love, Getting Together, M/M, Skinny!Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 18:12:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1992792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdamneddame/pseuds/thatdamneddame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky Barnes is eighteen, a senior in highschool, and totally in love with his best friend. It's okay. He'll either get over it or sleep with every hipster twink in college who's in a band. At least, that's what Natasha says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Stand Alone to Every Record I Own

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prettyasadiagram](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyasadiagram/gifts).



> Written as a birthday fic for prettyasadiagram, who has an actual present coming in the mail eventually and who is my actual favorite person ever. I know how much you love failboats and, well, I tried for you. Happy birthday, boo! I hope you enjoy!
> 
> My eternal and ever lasting thanks go to suhodownthrowdown and withyourteeth, who beta'd this for me lightning fast. Thank you thank you thank you guys so much. Remind me to thank you with ill-advised shots when my foot's unbroken.
> 
> Title from "Love You Like a Love Song" by Selena Gomez & the Scene.
> 
> Warning for one instance of a homophobic slur being used.

Natasha says he’s being ridiculous, but she’s also trying out for the Olympic gymnastics team in, like, six months, so she’s been extra mean lately.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” Bucky tells her, snatching the CD out of her hand.

She looks at him, infuriatingly calm, one eyebrow raised. “Oh, Barnes, that’s exactly why I gave it to you.”

Natasha is one of those people Bucky hangs out with that everyone warns him about. The guys on the football team like to say she’s a sleeper agent, like the Cold War means anything to them other than the setting of Rocky movies they catch late night on Spike TV. It’s nicer than the things they say about Steve, though. Really, Bucky thinks it’s his teammates people should be warning him about.

But Natasha’s a lot nicer than people give her credit for. “Fine, I’ll drop it, but when you end up mooning over every hipster twink in college that plays in a shitty band, don’t come crying to me.”

Bucky throws his pen at her head.

 

***

 

Steve’s in a band with some guys he met in detention—Dum Dum Dugan, Dernier, Jim Morita, Monty Falsworth, and Gabe Jones. Their music isn’t exactly good (Dum Dum plays the banjo for fucks sake), but Bucky still shows up to every garage practice like some desperate groupie. It’s not like it’s a hardship or anything. Bucky likes spending time with Steve, even if that means hanging around his shitty band practice and interrupting to tell them that they’re all entirely off beat.

“You don’t have to,” Steve tells him, sounding brave and self-sacrificing and it would totally have a different effect if he weren’t a hundred pounds soaking wet and wrapped in layers of oversized flannel.

Out of the two of them, Bucky has always been the better liar. “It’s quieter here than at home with my sisters and my ma yelling at each other. Besides, I can’t actually focus without listening to someone swearing in French in the background.” This last part is unfortunately true. Dernier has a dirty mouth.

“Thanks, Buck. You’re our number one fan.” Steve’s smile is so sweet and genuine that it makes Bucky’s heart ache just a little looking at him. They’ve known each other since they were five, so there’s no reason for Steve to have this kind of effect on him, but every time Steve Rogers smiles, Bucky goes weak at the knees.

 

***

 

On Wednesday, Jessa Voorhees and Cassie Schneider finally stop giggling three tables over from Bucky in the library and come over to talk to him. They're cute, if not academically or athletically inclined, but so is Bucky’s littlest sister, so he doesn't really judge.

“Are you going to Peyton’s party this weekend?” Jessa asks, smoothing her hands over her ponytail. Cassie pokes her in the ribs and Jessa slaps her hands away.

Bucky actually has shit to do today instead of just killing time like usual, waiting to give Steve a ride home after art club. But, still, it never hurt to smile. “I’m afraid I’m not. I already made other plans.”

Both Cassie and Jessa’s shoulders drop. “More fun than a party?” Cassie asks.

“More fun than a party,” Bucky confirms. He gives them the smile that always makes Natasha elbow him in the ribs, and they swoon a little. “Sorry, ladies.”

“Maybe next time, then,” Jessa says, sounding a little heartbroken.

Cassie pokes her in the ribs again. “See you in English tomorrow, Bucky!”

They leave, then, fortunately out of the library instead of where they were sitting before. Now he might actually be able to get a head start on his history essay.

 

***

 

“Cassie Schneider says you have a girlfriend,” Natasha dutifully reports at lunch, setting her lunch tray down next to Sam.

“I didn’t know you were friends with Cassie Schneider,” Sam says, sounding genuinely interested in Natasha’s friend making endeavors. Sam’s too good for them, but Steve imprinted on him a week into him transferring and he shows no signs of leaving. No matter what Natasha says, Bucky isn’t jealous.

Bucky frowns at all of them. “I don’t have a girlfriend. She wanted to know if I was going to this party this weekend and I told her I had other plans.”

Steve blushes faintly, maybe, it’s hard to tell with him because he’s so damn tiny that any shift in the room temperature seems to affect him. It’s possible that he just got hot. “You didn’t have to. Now she’s going to spread rumors.” For someone with a septum piercing, Steve has always cared how people see Bucky.

“It’s fine.” Bucky shrugs. He tries to ignore Natasha’s knowing look and Sam’s curious one and Steve’s love of self-sacrifice. “No one listens to them anyways.”

 

***

 

The first time anyone ever says, “Watch out for that Steve Rogers,” Bucky is fourteen years old and a freshman in high school. Bucky has an ice pack pressed to his split lip and Steve is on one of the health office cots, still weak from an asthma attack.

“He was standing up for himself,” Bucky says and hasn’t stopped saying since. His mouth tastes like coppery blood. He can’t stop thinking about what would have happened if he wasn’t there, if Greenberg had gotten his way.

Nurse Michelle sighs, the way all adults do when they think Bucky’s acting young and foolish. “You’re a good kid,” she tells him. “Don’t let him drag you down.”

Bucky stopped having to punch his point across by sophomore year, but adults are still telling him to look out, to not let Steve drag him down. It’s all bullshit. Steve’s just a punk with a better moral compass than any goddamn adult Bucky knows. He’ll follow Steve to the ends of the Earth and one day, Bucky knows, everyone will see Steve for the star that he is.

 

***

 

“You could have gone to that party,” Steve says, casual as you like, licking double chocolate chunk ice cream off his spoon. It’s the ice cream safari at the local zoo and it sounds lame as hell but there’s five different stations with free ice cream and Steve always brings his sketch book. They take turns holding out their arms, comparing wingspans to bald eagles and albatrosses, and Steve sits for hours, sketching the tigers, the red pandas, and the flamingos while Bucky hangs around the petting zoo with the sheep. They go every year. Bucky wouldn’t miss it for the world.

“And miss out on all the fun? Besides,” Bucky adds, “We might not be able to come next year.”

College looms over them, large and mostly not talked about. Well, mostly not talked about by Bucky. Steve wants to go to art school. Steve’s working on his portfolio and his applications. Bucky is waiting, dragging his feet, trying to figure out what schools he can go to that are near Steve. He doesn’t really know what he wants to do, so he doesn’t really care where he goes.

“You definitely won’t be able to go to that party again,” Steve points out, sounding more like his normal self and less like a self-sacrificing asshole. “What about your cherished high school memories?”

Bucky has an easy 50 pounds on Steve, so it’s not particularly difficult to push him into the garbage can. “You’re a punk, you know that.”

Steve laughs. “I’m not the one knocking people into garbage cans, jerk.”

Fuck that party. There is no place Bucky would rather be.

 

***

 

Waiting around before first bell on Monday, Natasha asks, “How was your date?”

“It wasn’t a date,” Bucky scowls. “You know that. Steve and I went to the zoo.”

Natasha pretends to throw up. “That’s disgusting, you guys disgust me,” she tells him, heartfelt. And then, “You know I told my friend Clint about you. He said to man up or shut up.”

Bucky highly doubts this, mostly because he’s not entirely convinced Natasha’s friend is a real person and not just an excuse to say even more terrible things to Bucky.

“You’re the one who keeps bringing it up.” It’s his only real defense anymore. At this point pretending he wasn’t head over heels, stupidly in love with his best friend would just be pathetic.

“Give me your iPod. I want to see if you’ve been listening to ‘End of the Line’ again on repeat.”

As luck would have it, Bucky’s dignity is saved by the bell.

 

***

 

The Howling Commandos—and seriously, what a dumbass name, but it’s a high school band and as much as Bucky wants all of Steve’s dreams to come true, he seriously fucking hopes that the stress of college makes them break-up—have had just one paying gig (Dum Dum’s neighbor’s daughter’s bat mitzvah) and have recorded just a single demo. It's called _Us Against The Red Skull_ and Bucky has five or six copies in his room for one reason or another.

(Okay, Bucky has five or six copies because he’s pathetic and because his was the only computer that actually had a functional CD drive and his sister just left her copy lying around waiting to get stepped on and if she wasn’t going to appreciate it then Bucky would.)

They’re not bad for a high school band but if it weren’t for Steve, Bucky wouldn’t listen to them at all. And Steve, for a scrawny kid with floppy hair, skinny jeans, and some pretty regrettable piercings, can sing like a goddamn angel. Sure he likes to talk about the 99 percent and going green and the ethics of PETA, but when he sings he sings from his soul. Painfully earnest and just so _Steve_ that it makes Bucky’s heart feel like it’s going to beat out of his chest.

And sometimes, maybe, Bucky locks his door and closes his eyes, lets himself get lost in the sound of Steve’s voice. And maybe he thinks about the way Steve’s eyelashes flutter closed, the lush pink of his lips around the words of the song. And maybe, just sometimes (fuck you very much, Natasha) he likes to pretend that heart wrenching ballad “End of the Line” is about him.

It’s like living in a fucking Taylor Swift music video. It’s awful.

 

***

 

“You’re going to have to tell me sometime,” Steve says. They’re doing homework at Steve’s kitchen table, like they do every night that all three of Bucky’s sisters are home. “You are applying to college, right?”

The last of Steve’s terrible blue dye job is finally fading from his hair and it makes Bucky think dumb shit about oceans and the open sky and bringing out the color of Steve’s eyes. Steve’s eyes that are currently trying to bore their way through Bucky’s nonchalant facade.

“Yes I’m applying to college. But it’s whatever.” He shrugs. This is Bucky’s standard answer; it works on Sam, the guys on the football team, and Bucky’s oldest sister who is about to graduate college and likes to talk about how all she got was a drinking problem and crippling debt. It didn’t work on Natasha, who rolled her eyes, punched him, and asked if he’d bought Steve a promise ring yet. His mother had said that he should apply to some state schools because his sister wasn’t lying about the debt.

Steve, because he’s a rotten little do-gooder to the core, frowns his disappointed grown-up frown. “Bucky, this is important.”

A lot of things are important to Steve—immigration reform, the rainforest, income inequality, feminism, and, because he’s the ultimate fucking hipster, dolphins. For some reason Steve has always ranked Bucky up there with his save the world ideals and it makes Bucky feel small and unworthy and like he wants to do good to make Steve proud.

“I don’t know, man, it’s just, I don’t know—it’s this thing I have to do but that I don’t really want to do.” Bucky shrugs. “It’ll be strange, leaving home.” It’ll be strange not have Steve always there, right next door, right where Bucky can reach him.

“You’re better than this town, Buck. You’re going to be great.” Steve smiles at him and Bucky has no idea why little old ladies at the grocery store tell him that he can do better than Steve Rogers. Bucky really can’t—Steve’s the end of the line for him. He might be young, but he knows this much is true.

 

***

 

Bucky is on the football team and has pretty good grades and perfect attendance three years running. When he was younger, he was a choirboy, and now he goes to church once a month because it makes his ma happy.

Once, he broke his leg because Steve said no one could climb that high in a tree and Bucky has been doing stupid shit for Steve, because of Steve, ever since they were gap toothed kids.

Once he got a split lip and a black eye because Sy Greenberg called Steve, “Fucking queer man,” and Steve always stood up for himself. Always. Even still, Greenberg hit first, and, well, he had a hundred pounds on Steve. Bucky couldn’t stand for that.

“I had him,” Steve pants later, still wrung from the fight. “Bucky, you didn’t have too.”

Their parents had been pissed—about the fight and the injuries and the suspension—but they understood why at least.

Bucky shrugs. “Steve, shut up.”

Steve never brings it up again. Sometimes Bucky wishes he would.

 

***

 

Because Natasha is disgustingly talented and super mean, she makes Bucky go running with her so she can work on her stamina. Usually Bucky likes it: the quiet, the wind in his hair, letting his mind clear out from all the day to day clutter as he focuses on the rhythm of his feet. Today, however, Natasha has other plans.

“You’re going to have to tell him you’re planning your future around him eventually.” They’re jogging at a gentle pace, but she’s not even out of breath. Bucky hates her a little.

“Thanks, Mom, but I wasn’t asking you.”

Natasha actually stops in her tracks. “Bucky, you can’t keep doing this to yourself. Mooning after him like some sort of Victorian waif.”

“One, I’m not doing that. Two, I’m fine. And three, I didn’t ask you.”

Because they have reached the end of Natasha’s interpersonal skills and patience, she slugs him in the arm. “You idiot. He’s just as stupid about you as you are for him.”

Bucky doubts this. It’s not that he thinks Steve is 100% stick straight, but he and Sam have that stupid “on your left” thing and they’re always talking about Marvin Gaye and Bucky has a hard time imagining Steve getting a hard on for anything other than Liberty, Justice, and the American Way.

But the other, more dangerous, truth is this: “We’ve been friends since we were five. I’m not ruining that.”

“Like he’d let it.” Natasha rolls her eyes. “Steve is better than that.”

Steve is better than a lot of things—high school drama bullshit, homophobic bullies, and dating someone like Bucky. Natasha’s always known exactly how good a person Steve is, which is why Bucky has always liked her, but she doesn’t know Steve or love him the way Bucky does. She didn’t go through puberty and divorcing parents and scraped knees and childhood fights with him.

“But _I_ can’t do that, Nat.”  It’s fine right now. Bucky can pretend that everything’s normal, that nothing’s changed, that he isn’t planning his life around someone who doesn’t love him back the same way. And it’s fine, all of it is fine, because that means Bucky gets to keep Steve. If he says it, if he makes it real, then there’s no going back.

Natasha just rolls her eyes at him. “Just go listen to that damn song one more time, Barnes. Then talk to me.”

She jogs away before Bucky can ask her what the hell that’s supposed to mean.

 

***

 

Because the universe is fundamentally unkind, Sam starts to show up at band practice.

“You’re not in the band,” Bucky points out, pointedly not moving his backpack to give Sam a place to sit.

“Neither are you.” Sam moves the backpack anyways and sits down, seemingly impervious to hostility. Bucky wants to hate him, he really does, but Sam is just so damn chill and funny and a genuinely good dude. Also, he likes Steve and Bucky has always had a soft spot for anything Steve related.

They sit in silence for a while, working on their own respective assignments while Steve bosses the guys around. Some days practice runs smoother than others, and today seems to be one of the rougher ones. Gabe and Dernier are quizzing each other on past participles in French and Dum Dum is practicing his “Free Bird” cover on the banjo. Steve is standing in the middle of it all, hands on his hips like someone’s disappointed mother, and he keeps saying, “Guys, are we going to work on the new song or what?” Because Bucky has probably done some severe psychological damage to himself, he finds this comforting.

It’s not until the Howling Commandos are all busy arguing about the bridge of “In The Future There Are No Flying Cars” that Sam turns to Bucky and says softly and totally out of the blue, “You know I’m straight, right?”

Bucky stares at him blankly, completely unsure of what that’s supposed to mean or what he’s supposed to say. He settles on, “Congratulations. You tell your folks yet?”

Because Sam thinks that they’re friendlier than they are, he laughs. “No, man, I just didn’t want you to think that I was stepping on your game or anything.” He nods towards Steve, whose tapping his foot along to Monty’s new baseline. “I wouldn’t want to ruin that.”

What Bucky wants to know how he keeps giving it away when he's been so careful. He wants to know how Natasha, how Sam—who's known him less than a year—can know, but Steve doesn't. Unless Steve already does know. And, well, Bucky would rather pretend all he feels for Steve is 100% pure friendship than to have Steve know but feel nothing in return.

"There's nothing to ruin," Bucky tells him. "We're just friends."

Sam looks over at Steve and then back at Bucky. "Huh. Could have fooled me."

Steve's singing now, smiling into the microphone and belting out how even if you fall (you fall) even in the snow (the snow) he'll never let you go. Bucky wishes Steve could have fooled him too.

 

***

 

They're fairly collaborative, the Howling Commandos, everyone contributing a chord progression here and a hook there. Songs are written mostly by one of the guys saying they have an idea and then all of the Commandos all yell at each other for an afternoon until something like a song emerges. Most of the love songs, though, Bucky knows the story behind. He can trace the history back to the crushes and break ups and get-togethers of the Commandos. What Bucky doesn’t know is where the song “End of the Line” came from.

He doesn’t ask because he doesn’t know—he doesn’t ask because he’s scared of the answer—but Steve sings it like it means something.

_End of the Line_

_Until we’re skin and bone_

_Until we’re trapped in who we used to be_

_I’m with you until the end of the line_

_when the winter train comes_

_I’m with you until the end of the line_

_but please, baby, please don’t go_

 

Steve sings the song like it hurts and Bucky just wants to ask him who left him, who hurt him, because Bucky has always looked out for Steve, will always look out for him. Bucky wants to know who Steve is pleading to stay, wants to hold Steve in his arms and promise him that he’ll never leave.

 

***

 

Steve is home sick from school (again) with a migraine (again), so Bucky is stuck at lunch with the matchmaker twins.

“So Natasha and I were talking,” Sam begins, which is never a good sign. Natasha is either Fort Knox or Queen Bee of gossip—there’s no in between. “And dude, are you and Steve really just friends?”

Bucky glares at Natasha, who just continues to drown her fries in ketchup like she hasn’t a care in the world. “I thought we were dropping this.”

“ _You_ were dropping this,” Natasha tells him. “I changed tactics.”

“Steve is crazy into you,” Sam adds. “I, just, _dude_ , how can you not see it? He wrote ‘Slow Dance in Brooklyn’ about you.”

“Slow Dance in Brooklyn” features an ill-advised banjo solo and appeared in the Howling Commandos repertoire after Gabe spent a month in France sucking face with some chick named Élodie. There is absolutely, 100 percent, no fucking way that song is about him.

“And ‘Times Square Never Changes (Wish You Were Here)’, ‘Paramus’, ‘Fifth Time’s the Charm’,” Natasha lists, counting each song off on her fingers as she goes.

Sam looks considering. “What about ‘Man on the Bridge’?” He asks, presumably because he’s been hanging around Natasha and Steve enough that he’s started to turn into an asshole.

Because Natasha is a genuinely bad person she smiles. “The one he wrote after Bucky came back from that Future of Technology summer camp all tanned and crushing on some nerd he met there?”

Bucky barely hears Sam say, “You know, Steve never told me the story behind that one,” over the sound of blood in his ears, the pounding of his own heart. He knows those songs, their stories—Gabe in France; Morita and his first girlfriend; Dernier’s terrible summer vacation.

Sam and Natasha are wrong, they have to be. They’ve listed half of The Howling Commandos discography and that’s _can’t be right_ because Steve loves girls named Peggy who are only there for a semester before being whisked back to England. Steve loves Greenpeace and dogs and terrible glasses. And Bucky has been absolutely head over heels in love with him before he even knew what that meant, before Natasha had pointed it out to him.

Steve’s a good guy. He wouldn’t string Bucky along if he knew and he sure as shit wouldn’t string Bucky along if he felt the same. Bucky knows Steve. At least, he thought he knew him.

“You can both fuck right off,” he tells Natasha and Sam, before storming out of the cafeteria.

Bucky knows himself, or at least he thought he did. He eats the rest of his lunch in his car and barely makes it to Calc before the second bell.

 

***

 

This is how it happens: Bucky and Steve can’t even remember meeting.

They didn’t always live side-by-side, sharing backyard adventures and lazy Sunday afternoons and overwhelmed babysitters. In the some abstract way, they know that Steve used to live somewhere else until his grandma became too old to live by herself so he and his parents moved in. But Bucky can’t remember what it was like, to be four-years-old and to only have his sisters as friends.

Growing up, they walked to elementary school together, where they sat in different classrooms or far away, across the room from one another. Once a teacher let them sit together, but that only lasted for a month. Bucky’s pretty sure that if he looked at his permanent record he would see a note, early on, that just reads _never again_.

Back then, they were all scrawny little kids, so at recess Bucky and Steve played kickball and dodge ball and king of the hill with the other boys. They made mud pies and kicked rocks and rolled their eyes every time one of the teachers blew their whistle and told them to stop.

In middle school, they had lockers on different floors, but they knew each other’s combinations and used them interchangeably. At lunch, Bucky talked about how Napoleon seemed pretty cool, up until Waterloo, and Steve talked about how Van Gogh seemed pretty cool, up until he sent his ear to a prostitute. They sniggered about the hooker. They also sniggered at how Napoleon had loved Josephine until his dying breath even though he left her, because they were little punks who didn’t understand love and passion quite yet.

By the time puberty started to kick into high gear for Bucky, Steve’s mom started talking about _late-bloomers_ and it made both boys blush. Steve had always been smaller than Bucky, but now Bucky was growing so fast it looked like Steve was shrinking. Because all thirteen-year-olds are shitty, some of the boys in gym class said some pretty terrible things and Bucky said some pretty terrible things back. Steve always said something worse, though.

Bucky was thirteen when he got into his first fight. Bucky will be bigger than Steve until he’s twenty.

They don’t notice the differences between themselves, but everyone else seems to. Steve wears flannel and dies his hair and gets piercings and a few maybe-legal, maybe-not tattoos. Steve stands up for himself and stands up for others and winds up in detention for it because he doesn’t believe in backing down.

Bucky joins the football team because he’s always loved sports and he likes the camaraderie. In high school, he stays late at school on Wednesday’s so he can drive Steve home after art club. Bucky takes meticulous notes and always goes to class because he never knows when Steve’s migraines are going to come, when he’s going to need Bucky to bring him his homework and explain to him what he’s missed.

Bucky considers this _friendship_ until he meets Natasha sophomore year of high school and she tells him that this is _love_. Bucky wouldn’t know. He’s never known anything but Steve.

 

***

 

“Hey man, are you okay?” Sam is at band practice again, but so is Bucky. He can’t not come. “You looked a bit janky after lunch. You know Natasha and I were just trying to help, right?”

Steve isn’t here today because Steve is at home, in his house next to Bucky’s, watching TLC because it’s the only thing he can handle after a migraine. The Howling Commandos are practicing their newest song, not paying attention to Bucky and Sam in their little corner. The fact that they don’t even comment on Bucky showing up to practice without Steve is probably telling.

“I’m fine,” Bucky lies. He should be home, bringing Steve toast and Gatorade and the history notes from today.

Sam looks sad for him. “I know Natasha’s acting crazy because of the tryouts coming up, but she’s not wrong. And, look, if you need anyone to talk to, I’m here.”

“What? You understand exactly what I’m going through?” Bucky’s not exactly great at feelings with anyone but Steve. Although, given the current evidence, he might not be that great about feelings with Steve either.

“No. I’m just here. Whatever you need.” He pats Bucky on the shoulder, waves goodbye to the Commandos, and leaves Bucky alone in the corner of a garage, listening to his best friend’s shitty high school band practice without his best friend there.

 

***

 

Steve is seventeen when he decides to get his septum pierced.

“You’re not a big enough hipster already?” Bucky asks, running his hand over the shaved half of Steve’s head.

Steve ducks away and laughs. “It’s about being yourself, Buck. You always gotta be yourself and be proud of that.”

“And metal through your nose is the way to go?”

“Metal through my nose tells everyone that I know exactly who I am,” Steve informs him. “Besides, they look cool.”

Bucky laughs. “There’s the real reason.”

It’s summer and they’re hanging out by the creek, where their old tire swing used to be before a storm blew down the tree it was in. Bucky could sit out here for hours with Steve, splashing around in the water like idiots, sunning themselves on the big flood wall rocks, trying to catch frogs like they’re eight years old all over again.

For most of the year Steve looks pale and gangly and small, wrapped up in sweaters and cardigans and big winter coats, but in the summer he looks tan and healthy. Bucky’s just starting to realize, with a mute sort of horror, how much he likes it. Steve golden and freckled from the sun, his eyes shining blue like the sky. Bucky thinks septum piercings are dumb as hell, but that’s exactly what he thought about undercuts right up until Steve went and got one.

Bucky scoots down the rock they’re sitting on until he can dangle his feet in the water. If he sits still long enough he knows that the little fish will come and nibble his toes. “Your mom’s okay with it?”

“She’s just happy I’m not illegally tattooing myself in the woods,” Steve says, moving so he’s right next to Bucky. Puberty finally did kick in for him, but he’s still short, legs not quite reaching the water’s surface. Bucky splashes his feet a little and Steve has to jump in the water to splash back. It doesn’t take long for it to turn into a water fight.

Later, after they’ve exhausted themselves, they strip down to their boxers and spread out on the rocks to dry off. Bucky watches droplets of water roll down Steve’s back, and some dark corner of his brain wonders what it would be like to trace those droplets with his tongue.

“So are you coming or not?” Steve asks. Bucky looks away before he can be caught staring.

“Just as long as you’re not tattooing yourself in the woods.” Bucky tells him dryly and Steve laughs.

 

***

 

Bucky listens to the Howling Commandos entire demo. And then he listens to it again and again and again. Nothing makes sense anymore. He listens to every song that Natasha and Sam say is about him and he texts Natasha to say that she is wrong, these songs are about girls. These songs are a thousand percent not about him.

_gee I wonder if he’s scared that his best friend might find out he’s in love with him_ , Natasha texts back. Followed by, _my friend Clint says that if I make it to the team you have to ask steve out_

_no bet_ , Bucky tells her because Natasha is definitely making the team and he’s still not even sure Clint is a real person.

What Bucky knows is that Steve has always been the brave one and Bucky has always followed along to make sure he doesn’t break his stupid neck. Bucky doesn’t think Steve would be a coward about this. Besides, Olympic tryouts are making Natasha’s brain go funny.

 

***

 

He's not avoiding Steve, not exactly. Bucky’s just avoiding talking to him. Driving home on Wednesday the silence in the car is oppressive.

At the stop sign at the end of their street Steve says, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but you have a week before I start to ask.”

“It’s nothing,” Bucky lies. “Just college applications.” He smiles weakly but Steve just frowns back.

Neither one of them says anything else the rest of the way home.

 

***

 

Because Bucky really is as stupid as Steve accuses him of being, he agrees to drive his youngest sister and her friends to the movies just so he has a reason to miss band practice. Because Bucky’s mother is a force to be reckoned with, she makes Bucky actually _watch_ the movie his sister wants to see, “So she doesn’t sneak off like last time.”

When he comes out of the theater three hours later and turns on his phone he has seventeen text messages and one missed phone call. There’s one from Steve asking where he is but the rest from Natasha asking him what the fuck he’s doing and is he really that big of a coward?

Bucky deletes the texts.

 

***

 

“I took my sister to the movies,” Bucky explains before homeroom on Monday. He hasn’t seen Steve all weekend and he’s missed him.

Steve, being an infinitely better person than Bucky ever will be, smiles. “That was really sweet of you, Buck. We should go to the movies sometime, I feel like we haven’t hung out in forever, just us.”

They really haven’t, not in between band practice and football practice. When they’ve hung out it’s always been with friends—Natasha and Sam and the Commandos. There’s no reason for Bucky’s ridiculous crush to get in the way of the most important friendship he’s ever had. “Yeah we should. Or, movie night?”

“Definitely movie night.” Steve grins. “We can start after practice Friday. I’ll let the guys know they can get pizza after without me.”

And it’s just so easy without Natasha, without Sam, to slip back into being Steve-and-Bucky—hanging off each other and laughing in the halls until some teacher shushes them. It’s so easy up until Natasha walks by and says, “Boys,” with that little smile on her face and Bucky can feel how small Steve is under his arm and he remembers how much he wants to peel Steve out of his skinny jeans with his teeth. He blushes furiously because Natasha smiles at him like she knows.

If Steve notices anything is wrong, he doesn’t act like it.

 

***

 

The rest of the week is fine. Steve graciously lets Bucky’s freak out pass, seemingly having decided that it was really about college.

“The class rankings really freaked me out too,” Steve confesses over lunch. “I do well, but I’ve just missed so much school recently with the migraines.”

“Yeah, man, but your portfolio will make up for it,” cheers Sam, ever the optimist.

Steve ducks his head, bashful. “I just hope RISD sees it the same way.”

Bucky taps _Rhode Island_ into the notes in his phone—there are plenty of colleges in that area that he would be fine with.

Natasha must see him do it, however. “Where are you thinking of going, Bucky?”

“Wherever they take me,” Bucky smiles, all false bravado, and under the table Natasha kicks him. It’s par for the course, at this point, so both Sam and Steve rolls their eyes and change the subject.

 

***

 

By Friday, Bucky is thinking that everything’s really okay. Sam and Natasha have seemed to drop it, although Bucky suspects that Natasha’s backing off has more to do with her increased training schedule than anything else. Bucky can return to his state of blissful denial where sometimes he has dirty dreams about his best friend and it’s like—he’s eighteen and cold showers are a thing for a reason. It’s whatever.

Okay, actually it’s even more pathetic than it was before because Bucky can’t bring himself to listen to the demo anymore, so instead of finding music by a real fucking band he unearths all of the Howling Commandos unreleased tracks he of course has on his computer and listens to that instead.

In perhaps one of the most desperate acts of self-preservation ever, he changes all the track names to Maroon 5 songs so Natasha will never find out. He’ll take the shame over Natasha’s attempts to mediate his love life any day.

 

***

 

Movie night is, actually, pretty great. Steve wears that XXXL sweater of his that’s so big the collar keeps slipping off his bony little shoulders and Bucky manfully represses the urge to kiss Steve’s clavicles.

Bucky's mom leaves them alone in the basement with a pizza and, like, fifty bags of chips. They decide it's zombie night, so they watch _Shaun of the Dead_ , _Zombieland_ , _28 Days Later_ , and because Steve is the most ridiculous hipster, _Fido_. Which is actually Bucky’s favorite. Shut up.

There are two couches in the basement, but Bucky and Steve end up crowded together on the same one because at some point Steve had solemnly declared, "The floor is lava," for which bucky had, obviously, thrown a pillow at Steve's face. The resulting pillow fight resulted in Bucky and Steve stranded on the couch without any pillows to step on and make their getaway.

Realistically, Bucky knows that two buddies, when stuck together on the same couch, should sleep head to toe, but it's three am and he's tired and this is _Steve_. Steve who keeps full body yawning and then protesting, “I’m fine, dude, seriously.”

"Yeah, well, I'm tired," Bucky tells him at last. He is, actually, and even if he weren't, their next movie option is _Warm Bodies_ , which, no. He grabs at Steve's ridiculous sweater and pulls him down so that he's laying half on top of Bucky, head pillowed on his chest, Bucky's arms around his shoulders. Their legs tangle together at the other end of the couch and this is probably crossing a line but Steve is yawning again and Bucky is comfortable.

"See, punk, isn't this better?"

"Yeah, Buck," Steve agrees between yawns, "it's really great."

 

***

 

Bucky wakes up with the world largest crick in his neck around six am, light just starting to filter in through the lone basement window. Steve is still sound asleep, arm thrown across Bucky's chest, so he figures the crick is worth it.

He runs his fingers through Steve's hair, still blue at the ends, and lets himself not worry about it. He falls asleep with his fingers still in Steve’s hair.

 

***

 

Bucky wakes up again to the sound of his ma banging around in the kitchen upstairs. Steve’s already up, sitting at the end of the couch with his sketchbook out. He’s beautiful, Bucky thinks, sitting in the dim morning light of his basement, septum piercing and undercut and all.

“Morning,” Bucky says, stretching out and kicking Steve.

Steve hits him in the leg and puts the sketchbook down. “So,” Steve says, eyes like steel, jaw set, “I’ve been talking to Natasha. And Sam.”

Bucky blanches instantly. “Please, please tell me you didn’t listen to her. She’s trying out for the Olympics. She’s a crazy person.”

Unfortunately with Steve, when push comes to shove, if it’s important, Steve will always shove and he won’t stop until he’s won. “She says you’re in love with me.”

“It’s fine. It’s nothing.” Bucky sits up and puts his head in his hands because this is the worst. This is what he abso-fucking-lutley didn’t want—Steve letting him down gently. “It doesn’t change anything.”

Steve reaches out for him and Bucky flinches away. “Bucky. Bucky look at me.” He reaches out again and his hand is so small compared to Bucky’s and he’s a better person than Bucky will ever be. “Is it true?”

Bucky can’t look at him. It was movie night last night. Everything was going back to normal. “I told you,” his voice sounds rough to his own ears and he clears his throat, tries to sound like he’s okay, “it doesn’t change anything.”

And then, because the universe has never made sense and probably never will, Steve laughs. “You’re in love with me? Jesus, Bucky, this changes everything.”

“You don’t need to make it worse,” Bucky snarls. ”I get it. We’re just friends. I thought you were better than that, Rogers.”

“Get your shit together, Barnes,” Steve tells him and actually punches him in the fucking arm. “Do you even listen to any of the shit I sing about or do you really come to band practice to learn French curse words from Dernier?”

It is far, far too early for this sort of bullshit, Bucky decides firmly. “What?”

“James Buchanan Barnes, you have been my best friend since before I can remember, and I have probably been in love with you for just as long. I have written, like, eight hundred songs about you.” If it were anyone else saying it, Bucky would call bullshit, but this is Steve who doesn’t have a dishonest bone in his body and who’s smiling at Bucky like he hung the goddamn moon.

Bucky can’t help but smile back. He can’t believe this might actually be really happening. “Say it again.” Steve has always liked a challenge.

“I’m in love with you,” Steve says. “Asshole.”

Bucky cannot believe this is happening, but Steve is smiling and he’s right there and Bucky can’t help himself. “Good,” he says, “because I love you too.” And then Bucky does what he’s been waiting to do for years, and pulls Steve in for a kiss.

 

***

 

Bucky’s mom finds them an hour later, pink lipped and rumpled from making out like the horny, love-sick teenagers they are. It’s mortifying—so fucking mortifying, Bucky’s sisters are never going to let him live this down—but when she kicks them out with an order to, “Go debauch Mrs. Rogers house. I need to do laundry,” Steve takes Bucky’s hand and he doesn’t let go. He is never letting go.

 

*** 

 

**EPILOGUE:**

 

Bucky walks back into his room after his afternoon seminar and finds a giant post-it note stuck to his laptop screen written in his roommate’s handwriting—“You’re boyfriend has been trying to skype you for the past three hours. Please make him stop. I just want to take a nap.”

Because Bucky is disgustingly in love, he smiles like an idiot, drops all plans on getting a head start on that Roman Empire essay, and Skypes Steve back instantly.

“My roommate says you were trying to call me,” Bucky says when Steve answers. His undercut has started to grow in and be has a brand new eyebrow piercing. Bucky misses him so much that it hurts. “Left me a note saying you were interrupting his nap and everything.”

Steve laughs and the sound is like music to Bucky’s ears. “I think your roommate should probably cool it with the naps and go to class once in a while. But I wanted to tell you we’re making a music video.”

“Oh?” Bucky can see his disbelieving face in that little box at the corner of the screen.

“Yeah, there’s this film student named Tony who is doing some project and he liked our music, so.” Steve shrugs like it’s no big deal, but even through the terrible Skype connection, Bucky can tell he’s blushing.

“Hey, that’s great. What song are you doing?”

Steve blushes in earnest now. “‘End of the Line’,” he admits sheepishly. Now that Bucky gets to see Steve naked on the regular, he finds that Steve wrote him the most ridiculous yearning love song ever hilarious. In fact, Bucky is still laughing when his roommate walks back into their room.

“Oh Jesus, are you two still at it?” he asks, taking one look at Bucky’s laptop screen. “Wait, is that Natasha’s Steve?”

Bucky and Steve look at each other through the computer and then back at Bucky’s roommate.

“Wait,” says Steve, looking mortified. Bucky can get behind that look. He is feeling similarly terrible. “Is that Natasha’s Clint?”

“Oh my god,” Clint moans before Bucky can say anything ridiculous like _how fucking incompetent are we not to know this?_   or _holy shit, you’re real_. “Oh my god, no wonder you assholes are the worst. I’m going back to the library and away from this bullshit.” He grabs his jacket off the bed and is out the door between one blink of the eye and the next.

Bucky and Steve sit in confused silence for a while before Bucky volunteers, “At least we now know she didn’t make him up?”

“Oh man,” Steve laughs, because he’s a crazy person, “You thought she was smug about us dating. Can you imagine what she’s going to say now?”

Bucky bangs his head against his desk—Natasha’s going to be the worst and Sam’s not going to be that much better. Steve keeps laughing on the other end of their Skype connection and Bucky cannot believe that he is in love with this asshole. He is the luckiest guy in the whole wide world.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to chainsmoking for the [Russian translation](https://ficbook.net/readfic/4601363)!


End file.
